RAMPING UP
The day Rampa Claus came to my house bearing gifts from deep in the West Virginia hills | april15.2025
By Douglas John Imbrogno | WestVirginiaVille | april15.2025
You know you live in the heart of the heart of West Virginia when your cellphone chimes one Spring day in April and the voice on the other end offers to deliver to your house some fresh, green botanicals grown deep in the state’s back hills. No, not that kind. (Although it’s true you used to get deliveries from that West Virginia bounty — in the Fall, not the Spring, which is its own wild-grown harvest time — before self-preservation caused you to abandon that crop a dozen years ago.)
The call is from a good pal who lives ‘Out Wayne,’ as they say. And let’s be clear about that phrase. You likely won’t know what it truly signifies unless you live near where I do, on the western edge of West Virginia and you have been out there. That is to say, way out in Wayne County. Because it is, indeed way the heck out there when you are really, actually Out Wayne. And, so, the friend from out there says he is coming back into town. And, then, he says this to you:
“Hey, I’ve got more ramps than I know what to do with. You want some?”
And what do you say to that?
‘Yes!’
Of course you say ‘yes.’ Because let’s stipulate for the record that the home delivery of fresh, free and pungent West Virginia ramps — a wild onion species that is cousin to leeks, scallions, and shallots — is a rare and good thing in one’s life. Even if you must admit something to your friend, to God (if She even exists), and to all native West Virginians something about Allium tricoccum, a plant that is itself native to North America. It is a confession: That your interloping into their state so very long ago features precious little experience in consuming the oniony, garlicky, and — notoriously — sometimes stinky plant.
Partly, it is that the short springtime season for freshly foraged ramps makes them only briefly available, which is why the food site linked above calls them ‘a Spring delicacy.‘ (Although as this food writer noted a decade ago: “Someone must have figured out how to grow them if Whole Foods is selling them …”)
Yet there is no real excuse for ramp inexperience if you have lived long in these West Virginia hills, as I have. Their annual springtime return and popularity across the state leads to so many ramp feeds and festival cameos that West Virginia becomes a sort of Ramp Con at this time of year. Over at the West Virginia Explorer feature site, my friend David Sibray recently cobbled together a list of nearly 25 community ramp dinners, festivals and rampish events across the state in this Spring 2025. We’ve missed this year’s edition of one of the granddaddy rampapaloozas — last Saturday’s annual Feast of the Ransom in Richwood, W.Va. (Personally and very memorably described in Laura Jackson’s fine 2024 Autumn House Press essay collection ‘DEEP & WILD: On Mountains, Opossums, & Finding Your Way in West Virginia’.)
But do make plans now, if you’re able to make tracks to Stinkfest — ramps have been called ‘little stinkers,’ among other chummy epithets — a free event from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 26, at the suitably named Wild Ramp local food market in the west end of Huntington, W.Va. Ramps are appreciated by artisanal chefs as a seasonal grace note with which to work offbeat wonders, and one of their number, Chef Nick Atkins, will whip up such dishes as ramp cornbread and fried ramps at Stinkfest.
Given this inexperience of mine, it follows that my ramp cuisine mojo is woefully inadequate. There is a high bar in West Virginia Explorer’s ramp-feed dishes listed above, which range from ramp casseroles to ramp pepperoni rolls. Alas, that is just how it turned out for me nearly half-a-century after getting to the state, when the tempest-tossed waves of my young life washed me out of the undulating Ohio flatlands and dropped me into the oceanic West Virginia hills, a callow, yet mostly sincere 21-year-old.
As they say in the green rolling hills of this place that folks call ‘The Mountain State’: ‘I got here as soon as I could.’ I took up the reins of my first adult-like job here, which led to a lifelong journalism career. And, so, there I was in 1980, a cub reporter on the police beat at the leading newspaper in West Virginia’s second-largest city. And that is not saying much since not a one of its cities is all that large, as this immigrant youth from Cincinnati would soon discover. That was also — his youthful Ego would like to note — when that young guy had peak hair, which you can see on the Huntington Herald-Dispatch press card he still possess a half-century later, although he probably was supposed to turn it back in when he quit that first job.
I don’t think I ever tasted ramps during that initial dip into West Virginia. I quit my newspaper job in the late 1980s — a late twenty-something burn-out from covering one too many Pumpkin Fest features and County Commission meetings full of the sturm und drang of sewage rate-hikes.
And, so, you know, you pull the plug on everything in your life, in hot pursuit of some hazy, wannabe-heroic, open-ended international ramble. Leave your newspaper career. Leave your green-as-a-ramp-sprout crackerbox house that was also Out Wayne — way back up sinuous Porter’s Fork Road where the dogs hardly ever stopped yapping just like the ones in the Twilight Bark in “101 Dalmations.” You also leave your significant other because you were living out there together for several years, in the chirping, tree-frog filled hills.
So, I ditched West Virginia for a grand adventure in another country with better cheese and far, far better red wine, although not a single ramp. But that is a tale for another day and one that didn’t end so well, although our young protagonist did finally come to his senses and get around to marrying that significant other, who remained Out Wayne while he went off gallivanting. And who remains significant to him up to and including the Spring Day in 2025, when a tall man with an orange beard and a bag of ramps walks through his front door.
According to John Mariani, author of “The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink,” the word ramps comes from “rams” or “ramson,” the name of the wild garlic plant in an Elizabethan dialect. People in Appalachia, its native habitat, call the plants ‘ramps.’ Elsewhere, they’re known as wild leeks.
An hour after his initial Ramp Delivery Alert, my man shows up on the front porch with a shoulder shopping bag stuffed with ramps. They are conveniently compartmentalized into plastic baggies. (And you think to yourself: ‘Self, let’s recall 30 years ago someone showing up at your crib with plastic baggies full of green stuff which back then was something else entirely, botanically speaking …’
And your friend says:
“How do you feel about intense, garlicky goodness? You want one? Or two? ”
And you reply that it is true, you are a big fan of intense, garlicky goodness. So, you take two baggies of ramps in the prime of their young lives. Because the fact of the matter is that your buddy has a big yellow, reusable grocery sack full to the brim with fresh-bagged ramps from deep Appalachian hill country. And let the record state that it will be a long time before another car pulls up outside your home with a huge sack of pre-bagged ramps for giveaway. Or maybe it will just be next Spring in 2026, if your buddy still lives way out in Wayne County, although he has been talking of moving closer to town, which will seriously hamper his own fresh ramp mojo.
My friend hoists his big Ramp Bag onto his shoulder.
“I gotta get going,” he says. “I’m Ramp Santa today and have to drop off bags to other friends and family …”
Drawing upon your pitiful practical knowledge of ramps — I must note that never once do my friend and I use the common-enough West Virginia locution ‘a mess of ramps’ — you ask him about the best way to cook them.
“Eggs is one way, right?” you ask. “I had scrambled eggs and ramps once, but that was a long time ago, like in 2005 …”
He nods. Mixing them up in eggs is good, he agrees. Tossing them into the finalizing heat of a mess of potatoes being fried is another good way to eat them, he suggests. (He did not say ‘mess of potatoes,’ which is a phrase I just made up in the spirit of things.)
Then, my friend’s eyes light up.
“But the best is to make ramp pesto!”
He reels off the particular amounts of ramps, nuts, and olive oil you need, yet I am now staring off into space and will later have to look up a good recipe online. You see, being the word nerd I am, plus the sort of person who has spent his life collecting funky words and phrases like other people collect glass unicorns or troll dolls, I am momentarily transfixed by the evocative phrase my friend just uttered. It speaks not just to my forthcoming West Virginia education in ramp haute cuisine to which my buddy just opened up my life, but to my deep Italian roots.
I feel a sudden surge of dago-hillbilly oneness in my soul.
Plus, I realize something after this Ramp Santa has exited my front door to finish his appointed rounds (‘And a Merry Ramp-ness to all and to all a goodnight …!’). Not once during his visit did I think about the dire, devastating state of America and its declining place in the world, captained by a fellow far, far stinkier than a mess of ramps left to rot and decay into a puddle of slime on a hot afternoon and who …
But enough about that mess of a guy. At least, for this moment. Yet here’s the thing. Beside their garlicky goodness, this is also one of the superpowers of ramps in the springtime of one’s life in West Virginia. They bring you back to fresh things and a refreshing subject matter while we wander through this vale of tears — whether we’re Out Wayne or wherever the heck you live.
There are wild ramps out there, man.
So, should you meet Rampa Claus along your way in life — or find ramps making their brief appearance at a farmer’s market or in just the right kind of store — below is how to breathe life and tastiness into that most euphonious and tasty of phrases spoken by my pal. Repeat after me the next time the endless onslaught of ‘BREAKING NEWS’ headlines threatens to break you a little or a lot, and you begin to lose all hope:
Ramp Pesto.
Below is a ‘Ramp Leaf Pesto’ recipe by Alan Bergo, who has a notable life story full of painful twists, but which led him from some noteworthy, if brief-lived restaurant postings, to becoming a James Beard Award-winning chef, author, show host, and self-described ‘Forager | Chef, Hunting Mushrooms, Wild and Obscure Food.’ Noteworthy, too, in Bergo describing this recipe at his website, he underscores something about the preservation of overly foraged wild foods worth lifting up since ramps have gone from Appalachian oddity to a common culinary starring role:
‘… With how popular ramps are, everyone needs to pitch in and do their share to make sure that ramps stay here for the future, since they grow slowly, and if all the ramps get picked from a patch, there won’t be any left for anyone else to forage …’
https://foragerchef.com/ramp-leaf-pesto-recipe/
RAMP LEAF PESTO by Alan Bergo | Click to view video
NOTE: If you prefer a written-out recipe, see this page on Bergo’s website.
P.S.
My appreciation to Kyle ‘Rampa Claus’ Vass for including me on his 2025 Ramp Rounds and expanding my Appalachian culinary world. And thanks to Sue MacDonald for her editing help on this piece.
I'll be there at Stinkfest on Saturday.
I was wondering if you sell ramps? I used to live in WV, as a matter of fact I grew up in Richwood, and moved to Parkersburg after I graduated from high school. I now live in the panhandle of Florida and can't get back to WV anymore do to my and my husbands age. I have been so hungry for ramps and would love to have a couple of pounds of them, I can smell them cooking already, and by the way another good way to cook them is to fry them with sausage and potatoes, yum yum. Please let me know if you or anyone you know sells them. Thanks, Sherry Batten